I would have canceled my order, but my recent experiences with DirecTV and Apple refurbished products has been surprisingly good, and once I read that this sound bar was “Manufacturer Refurbished” and Samsung ensured that they all meet or exceed their strict standards, etc., I decided to let the order ride.

I got the sound bar two days ago, on January 3. As I pulled each piece out of the box, I was dismayed by how badly the glossy, black lacquer finish was marred with scratches and scuff marks – I can only suspect that this unit must have been a demo in a store and was moved around quite a bit. As I pulled the subwoofer out, I noticed heat damage to two areas, possibly from being too close to a source of heat (other devices?).

I was already going to return that unit based on what I found, but I was curious how well a sound bar actually worked so I set it up. No luck. The bar itself worked, but it could not make a wireless connection to the subwoofer. Instead the subwoofer would sit there and periodically it would emit a loud low frequency hum or rumble for about five minutes or so. I tried a dozen or more times, and the next day, magically, while I was on the phone waiting for a Samsung tech support person, it finally made the connection. Now the subwoofer was playing low frequency sound from the TV, but mixing it with that oh-so-pleasant rumbling sound I mentioned before.

The two Samsung technicians were useless. They both were reading scripts – starting with the steps in the same manual I had in front of me – making me repeatedly power down, reset, power up, mute, reset, power down, … Finally, 37 minutes later, the second technician offers to “get this problem resolved”, if only I go through the steps one more time to make sure we had tried everything (everything being a repeat of the same thing). When we got the same result, and he declares, “thank you for being patient, I apologize that you received a faulty unit, I am going to make sure we resolve this quickly”. He started asking me for my address info, and, hoping they might send me a new unit, or a better refurbished unit, I asked him if they would send me the replacement overnight. He said he could look into doing that, as soon as they got this unit back from me and repaired. I probably snorted at that point. “Are you telling me that after what I told you about the physical damage to this unit, and the trouble we are having, and the fact I already waited a month to get this, you want me to wait while you fix this piece of crap? No thanks.” I asked to speak to a manager, and he transferred me to a line that rang and rang until I gave up and hung up.

I took the unit back to the local BestBuy. I still would like a Samsung sound bar, but I am now wary of Samsung. Their customer service was pathetic. I recall my experiences with Sony products and their subpar support.

Be warned: Samsung’s “refurbished” products are not reliable, nor unblemished.

Also, I have to wonder about all those companies out there who sell refurbished units with warranties with only a fraction of the term of the new product warranty. It doesn’t make me feel very secure knowing that they themselves don’t have faith that their refurbished product will last as long as a new unit.

• 10 are 60″ or greater
• 11 are in the 50″s.
• 9 are in the 40″s.
• 9 are 32″ or 22″.
• 21 are LED.
• 9 are Plasma.
• 9 are LCD.
• 14 are 3D.
• Some have WiFi, some have Skype, some run apps…

(LG offers 64 TVs on their US website.)

Next year Apple will probably start selling three TVs.  Worldwide.

• a 23 inch model
• a 32 inch model
• a 46 inch model
• They all have everything.

In response to a commenter (Marc Schriftman) who wrote, “Everyone here seems entirely to have conflated Wall Street with Capitalism“, I replied:

Right on.  Pure Capitalism doesn’t rely on lobbyists and bribing politicians.  Companies don’t have to shirk their social responsibilities, so that they don’t have to pick up and go elsewhere looking for new employees and new customers.

People like Mr. Williamson love to criticize the performance of services that they’ve spent a lifetime trying to weaken and tear down.  A better public education system, helps Capitalism by providing better employees.  Surely he’s still lucid enough to remember how our own educated Americans created the computer and Internet revolutions, before being cast aside and their jobs given to better educated Indians and Chinese.

Similarly, as an employer, I would love to see the government pick up and do things that are not core to my business.  I shouldn’t be in the business of providing health care, nor retirement.  Chinese companies don’t because China does.  Chinese companies pass that savings along in their pricing.  Does it not serve Capitalism well to have companies do things that they are “insanely great” at, rather than spend time and resources on providing a retirement plan that won’t go down with the next Wall Street scandal?

Graphene could be the next big boost in CPU speeds, RAM density, flexible circuitry, …

£50m boost for graphene research (The University of Manchester).

Click to view slideshow.

That’s their current conservative government that takes away precious school time to indoctrinate the Iranian kids. This is the norm in countries where democracy and freedom are under threat.  Horrible, isn’t it?

In the US, our conservatives want all students to stand each morning and pledge allegiance to the flag (and the nation for which it stands, under God). These are the same conservatives who think that government is needlessly meddling in people’s lives.

While class time is shrinking due budget cuts, we don’t seem to have issues wasting a minute or more of our children’s day, five days a week, ironically reminding them that while that flag stands for liberty and freedom, they are being forced — bullied — into reciting the pledge.

Our children are asked to pledge allegiance every weekday. The President of the US and our congressmen and politicians only have to take the oath of office once every four years.

Wouldn’t it be better if our children spent the same few minutes each day reading a section of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights? I’d much rather know that our students can recognize and differentiate the amendments, rather than memorizing a 31 word statement.

Related:

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-11/politics/pledge.of.allegiance_1_appeals-court-supreme-court-michael-newdow?_s=PM:POLITICS

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1364207&srvc=home&position=emailed

iCloud is the much rumored “star” of next week. Given what I have heard, and my experiences developing iOS and Mac apps, I thought I would list what I would like to see in iOS:

• For iOS and Mac developers:
• A back-end storage and processing system
• Push notification support – Currently developers have to put too much work into providing this and the above via their own servers or through third party providers
• social networking hooks
• A web front-end to some of the above
• For users:
• Storage for Music, Movies, and other licensed media, without users being charged for the size of the collection (presumably files are stored once, and shared by all licensees, rather than stored once per licensee)
• I mentioned movies. I’d like to be able to insert a DVD or Blu-ray, have my MacBook Pro send proof to iCloud that I was in possession of that disc and then allow me to download iPhone or iPad versions to the respective devices, for offline viewing later.  Not streaming, but offline viewing. As in, on an airplane.  (You know the problem with this? NetFlix and other rental discs would have to be encoded so as to differentiate themselves and not show as being “owned” by me).
• A Dropbox-like Documents folder. It is available locally, offline, or online, and synced automatically, and made available to other systems, such as second or third computers, iOS devices with the possibility of sharing portions of that data securely or openly with others.
• An integration with a hardware device, such as a TimeCapsule, that would then provide:
• A home server for iTunes, iPhoto, … which can serve files to AppleTV, AirPlay compatible devices and be backed-up to iCloud
• A wireless platform that keeps iOS devices synced and updated, without resorting to plugging into any PCs
• A possible relay point between future smart technology in your car and your data and the cloud. For example, a car sitting in a garage would automatically update its songs and playlists and replace songs with new ones. It would also be possible to push a Google-map type of direction list from your laptop, before you get into the car and have it automatically set its destination for when you are ready to go.
• A possible central control system for home automation and home monitoring. This one is probably further out as Apple hasn’t yet discussed this area, but Google has already announced technology for Android to control lights and appliances.
• Integration with an unlimited back-up service similar to Crash Plan, Mozy, Carbonite, for all computers in the household. I don’t consider this to be a necessary part of iCloud as backups and archiving aren’t really the same thing as real-time file and data access stored in the cloud, but this would be a welcome service – especially as people put more and more of their valuable memories on their computers and don’t realize how important back-ups can be.
• Allow for the dissemination of a new class of iOS devices throughout the house from alarm clocks that play your music and provide you with morning weather and news reports, to large, wall hung, beautifully framed, screens that are configured to display artwork, media, news, or any combination.

In a Wealthy Bay Area Enclave, No Money for Roads – WSJ.com

Excerpts:

In 2010, only three cities in the region—Rio Vista, St. Helena and Vallejo —had roads ranked below Orinda’s using a federal rating index, according to a report by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional agency. The Bay Area average was 66, while Orinda’s came in at 51. A rating of 50 or below means a road’s surface is in poor or failed condition.

…

But Orinda doesn’t have enough money to repair the roads, a problem shared by many other cities in California faced with tight budgets. Orinda is heavily dependent on property-tax revenue, which has to be divvied with the state, because the largely bedroom community has relatively few stores and other businesses on which to levy sales tax…

What’s wrong with this picture? Orinda is one of the most affluent cities in California. Yet we can’t even repair our own roads. Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs, among others are being damaged by these roads, yet there is nothing being done to address the problem.

So where is trickle-down theory? Where is the free market? How is it that a rich community can’t have nice roads? If there ever was a place that trickle-down theory would work, it would be in Orinda. Multimillion dollar homes, nice cars, plenty of wealth. Yet, no trickle-down.

This is why we have taxes. Taxes pay for stuff that people don’t or can’t. And when you don’t generate enough tax revenue, then there is not enough money to spend on the things you think that your government should provide.

Now, this is where some right wing conservative tells me that the problem is with corruption in the government, and that the government already taxes us enough to be able to cover needed road repairs, if there were no waste. I can somewhat agree with that. But where are the conservatives out there campaigning to reduce waste? All I hear are people out there who want to “starve” government, or lower taxes, or treat our teachers and other government employees as if they were indentured servants. Where is the honest debate on how to reduce corruption and increase efficiency?

I said “somewhat“. Paying for roads is just a small chunk of what your taxes pay for. Additionally, taxes pay for health inspections and disease control, airports and airspace management, fire and emergency services, banking and monetary protection, environmental, food and water cleanliness, schools, and all those other things (at the national level, taxes pay for wars and protection of your property from communists and others who might want to take it away) that together make up the “American Dream”. Before another politician champions “low taxes”, one should ask them how much tax revenue they think is needed to pay for the “American Dream”. They won’t have an answer because it doesn’t matter – the “lower tax” ideology/movement is out to kill the “American Dream”, along with the government that tries to provide that. To them, the “American Dream” is all entitlements and handouts to other people (even if they themselves, or loved ones, have directly or indirectly, at some point, enjoyed those same handouts).

Orinda’s situation is even more ironic. For years there have been debates on refreshing the downtown shopping areas, in order to bring in more merchants and with them, more tax revenues. The argument against has been that more shopping will bring in the unwanted elements – riffraff descending upon Orinda.

Sad.

Yes, they’re the ones who cut taxes when we had surpluses that could go towards paying down our debt. They are the ones who needlessly took us into a second war, despite the fact that we didn’t know where the money to fund either of those two wars would come from (tax hikes during the time of war aren’t so strange, unless it’s somehow anathema to wisely figure out how to pay for your expenditures). Yes, they are the ones who robbed the economy of billions of dollars and got a huge bailout, and billion dollar bonuses.

Yes, let’s blame them. Easy.

Let’s go after them and make them give up their hard earned benefits and pensions. Why should they be any different than all those who don’t have pensions and benefits? Like all those poor CEOs who have to reimburse shareholders for their benefits and give up their pensions and golden parachutes when their stock and company performs poorly. (they do do that, right?)

Let’s make those fat-cat government employees give up these benefits, just like we expect our politicians (they’re government employees too, after all) to forgo their nice salaries, top tier health care, lifetime paychecks, pensions, security and perks. Hey, we all know government employees are mostly rich folk, like our politicians, who can afford to work for free.

I know, I know, those poor politicians need to have all the perks and the good salary since we don’t want them to have to worry about where their next paycheck is going to come from – god forbid we have corruption at the top levels. But we don’t have to worry about poorly paid government workers – after all, where are they going to go? Where else would they be able to get a job? And so what if they leave to find a better paying job? There are a ton of people out there who’d love to have their job, and thankfully, they probably won’t be part of that educated elite!

Yes, as I said, whoever those government workers are, darn them for being so convenient to blame and to sully.

_______

On a more serious note, I’d like to see how much longer this madness would continue, if we started to group our politicians as yet another subset of the same “darn government employees”. Try to touch their compensation packages and I bet they’d be singing a different tune.